Seafall and What Went Wrong With the Most Anticipated Legacy Game Ever

SeaFall At A Glance

I have played SeaFall to completion twice. It took my first group fourteen sessions to finish the campaign. My second group took eleven sessions. They had also played more legacy games so understood how to approach SeaFall’s legacy mechanisms before we started. I tracked every voyage discovery for both campaigns, taking notes on common threads regarding exploration strategies and the biggest game altering legacy unlocks. I know exactly when this game shines at creating wonder, and when its systems utterly disappoint.

SeaFall launched way back in 2016 (BoardGameGeek) as legacy gaming’s hottest new title. Of course it did. Rob Daviau (Wikipedia), co-creator of the legacy game format designed SeaFall to be the ultimate exploration legacy experience. Players would literally sail ships across blank maps searching for new lands, expanding trade routes, and watching the world be written and stickered upon permanently.

In a lot of ways, SeaFall approaches greatness. Played around the right group, it produces some of the best legacy wow moments I have ever experienced. However, it also contains systems that fall flat so hard they cancel the fun you have while playing almost entirely.

Let’s start with the good though, shall we?

What SeaFall Is

SeaFall is a game about sailing ships to explore, trade with new lands, and fight other ships as the world around you is unveiled (Plaid Hat Games). Each session is known as an age, and your actions between these ages change the game permanently through writing and stickers. Players will sail their ships around exploring trade goods and fighting other ships as they are allowed by the map (UltraBoardGames). As you explore, the world map will change with newly discovered areas being revealed to players through the exploration system (Plaid Hat Games).

Each turn players will choose advisors which allow them to take certain actions. These actions can be used to sail your ship to different spaces, explore the space your ship is on, trade with goods, raid other ships, or upgrade your ship or crew. If you sail your ship to an unexplored space you will pull cards to determine what you find there. Some cards will net you permanent additions to the board which are placed using stickers. Other cards will unlock sealed packets with rules additions or story information.

Victory is handled through a point system that spans games (UltraBoardGames). Players earn victory points, known as glory points, each game. They also earn milestone points that track through all games in a campaign. Once players reach certain milestone point thresholds game altering legacy unlocks are revealed.

I love this game thematically. Each new session feels like you are playing on the cusp of history. As you expand across the map you leave permanent evidence of your travels by placing stickers and adding written story elements directly to the game board. New destinations unlock permanent changes to the game, for better or worse. It’s delightful.

Or at least it is when SeaFall’s systems aren’t bogging you down with nonsense.

Systematically Shipwrecked

The issue with SeaFall is that it wants to have its cake and eat it too. Nearly every system offers at least one interaction that is just awful and kills the momentum of play. Unfortunately, they do this often enough that even SeaFall’s highlights are tainted by the mediocrity of its worst elements.

The Wonder and the Weird of Exploration

SeaFall’s exploration system is ingenious. You start every campaign on an empty board. There are a few starting islands scattered about, but for the most part, the world map is a massive expanse of blue ocean. When you sail onto an ocean tile you haven’t explored you draw cards to determine what you find. These cards may reveal islands which you can then place on the board using stickers. They may also provide resources or story elements.

This creates an amazing tension. In campaign one my group felt very routine about exploring near our starting locations. We spread out widely but cautiously, unwilling to stray too far too soon. It wasn’t until late game that we really started to venture out and discover what the ocean had in store for us.

One of my players found a merchant island barely a session in. They gained a massive economic advantage our group never overcame. Another player found an island with hostile natives and watched their crew totals decline from poor encounters. I found the biggest haul of victory points possible by sailing through a dangerous raiding strait completely by accident.

When it comes to wonder, SeaFall delivers. “I can’t wait to see what happens when we sail here” is a quote I heard more than once during both of my campaigns. Unfortunately, whenever you unlock a new location there is a decent chance you will have to read a ton of text to find out what happens.

Welcome back to mediocrity.

Exploration cards are literally the only way to advance on the world map. Each card has some instructions on it that must be followed when you discover that space. Many of these cards have you reading paragraphs of text to discover your fate. Not only does this slow down gameplay tremendously, but it can really kill the vibe of your discovery. Suddenly instead of grappling with what a discovery might bring you are parsing dense paragraphs of text.

Having a house rule that each person takes a turn reading aloud doesn’t fix this problem. Reading several paragraphs between each player’s turn just drags down pacing even more.

Something Isn’t Quite Right with This Economy

SeaFall has interesting economic systems. Each tile on the board produces specific resources, and certain locations produce unique goods that can be traded. You can establish trade routes from one island to another which will provide you with small amounts of their goods each age. You can trade with locations by sailing your ship to that location then using an action to trade. Successful trades can net you resources, story elements, or allow you to upgrade your ship.

Playing the economic game is mostly fine until someone discovers a location that gives them a massive leg up on the rest of you. It isn’t necessarily better strategy, it can just be an unlucky discovery by your opponents. But once someone finds a resource heavy location it kills the motivation to play the economy game properly.

This happened to me both times I played SeaFall. Someone would get significantly more resources than the rest of us and dominate from there on out. Once you are out-leveraged on resources there isn’t much fun to be had.

Don’t Give Me That Cursed Pirate Talk

SeaFall implements a surprisingly complex combat system for what you would expect from sailing the high seas. Combat is initiated when you sail your ship to a space with another ship. Each player then resolves combat by comparing ship ratings and rolling dice. Higher ratings get more dice. Attackers can steal goods, destroy ships, or take crew members from defeated ships.

Combat plays fine. There isn’t anything overtly terrible about it. Except that it takes forever to resolve anything remotely interesting. Even minor conflicts will bog down gameplay as you roll dice, modify dice, and compare who wins the combat. What should be soaring highs of cutlass-wielding insanity are reduced to us sitting there going “okay roll dice” over and over.

Combat really shines when everyone is evenly matched. However, attackers are heavily disadvantaged if they don’t destroy or run away from their opponents. There are ways to mitigate this, but combat is always a lose-lose proposition.

Players must also conduct ship upkeep each turn. If your ship suffers too much damage your crew start abandoning ship and you begin to lose resources. During combat we are already rolling piles of dice. Adding an additional dice cheque after every encounter adds significant downtime to sessions.

Skip the fights where you can. It doesn’t fix SeaFall’s ocean of problems but it makes it far more tolerable.

Your Campaigns Will Suffer from Irregularity

SeaFall actually does a lot of things right with regards to its legacy structure. New rules are revealed as you open packets throughout the campaign (SeaFall Rulebook PDF). These can include new ship types, new exploration mechanics, and additional ways to score victory points. This creates constantly evolving strategies that feel natural by building off of previous gaming sessions.

Legacy rewards are paced surprisingly well overall. There is almost always something to look forward to on the next turn. That is, provided we haven’t stagnated in a session where little interesting content is revealed.

SeaFall unfortunately suffers from absurd campaign length. My first group took fourteen sessions to complete our campaign. My second group took eleven. Yet another group I was watching play took eight.

Part of this is because SeaFall has no concept of session zero. You aren’t told how many sessions a campaign will take. You only know when you reach the end. This creates some anxiety around choosing when to start a SeaFall campaign. What if we get fourteen sessions in and it still doesn’t feel over?

SeaFall has no good way to pace itself. Too much legacy content gets unlocked too slowly.

SeaFall Still Worth Playing?

No.

SeaFall came out eight years ago, and the legacy game market has greatly expanded since then. Contemporary legacy games have solved many of the problems SeaFall still suffers from.

SeaFall looks great. The components are solid with thick cardboard and attractive art. Stickers are fun to apply. The rulebook is easy to follow. Setup and breakdown takes time but is about what you would expect from a game with hundreds of components.

Legacy mechanics are still solidly conveyed. Opening up new content is exciting every time. Reading new rules and adding content to the game creates excitement for future play sessions. SeaFall shows you how legacy games work. In theory.

The reviews note it has brilliant moments but can feel bogged down (Shut Up and Sit Down), and this perfectly captures the experience.

Why SeaFall Should be Avoided

Want exploration that has you on the edge of your seat? Play Sleeping Gods. It has better production values and none of the pacing problems that plagued SeaFall.

Want lots of rules changing content? Try Pandemic Legacy Season 2 or Gloomhaven. Both have better methods of keeping games feeling fresh.

Want a pirate game? Merchants and Marauders has you covered. Want naval adventure done properly? Try Black Fleet.

SeaFall should be played if you want to see exactly what legacy games can do wrong. Every piece of innovative brilliance it brings to the table is matched with an “and here’s why that doesn’t work” reaction.

SeaFall is at best a study. Learn from it what you can and play games that have gone further.

Verdict

SeaFall is a 4/10 experience that contains 8/10 ideas wrapped in 2/10 execution. I have played it through two complete campaigns because I wanted to understand where the systems break down and why such promising concepts produce such frustrating gameplay.

The exploration discovery moments are genuinely magical when they work. Opening sealed content feels exciting every time. The permanent world building through stickers creates authentic investment in your shared narrative. But these highlights are buried under hours of tedious upkeep, unbalanced economics, and drawn out combat that makes sessions feel like work rather than adventure.

SeaFall’s legacy advancements have been improved upon by better designed systems. Play those games instead.

See our breakdown of the top 10 legacy games that actually work

William

William’s a graphic designer from Leeds with a passion for board games that tell great stories. He champions theme-driven experiences where dice rolls shape the drama and mechanics serve the narrative. If it doesn’t make a good story, he’s not interested.